Vanessa George, 39, from Plymouth

George lived an outwardly respectable life in Plymouth with her husband of more than 20 years, Andrew, 41, who works for a catering equipment firm. The couple have two teenage daughters.

George worked as a school classroom assistant before becoming a nursery worker in September 2006, and had an NVQ level 2 in childcare. She made a little extra money babysitting and had spent a decade working with children – though there is no evidence that she assaulted or took photographs of children before joining the nursery. She has also worked as a secretary.

She began to take an interest in meeting men online in 2008 and engaging in sexual chat with them. Before then she had sometimes boasted of her extra-marital sexual exploits, although it is not clear if these were real. Between December 2008 and her arrest in June there were 10,000 contacts via phone, text, email and MSN between Blanchard and George.

George made 124 pornographic images of children in that time.

An only child, her parents divorced when she was at primary school and her mother, Sylvia, died of cancer in 1986. She used the money she inherited to buy a semi-detached house in Douglass Road, Efford, where she was living at the time of her arrest. She has not seen her father, a retired shipbuilder, for decades. He described her as an outgoing, clever, precocious child. Workmates thought of her as hard-working and fun – she loved dressing up in silly clothes and false moustaches, but she was described by police as "emotionally vulnerable".

Colin Blanchard, 38, from Littleborough, Rochdale

Nicknamed "Billy Bullshit" by neighbours, Blanchard boasted to anyone who would listen that he had a private jet which he used to ferry Liverpool FC football players around in. He claimed he made movies and had millions stashed away in Dubai.

There were some outward trappings of wealth at his detached house overlooking open fields in Littleborough, near Rochdale: a television with a 50in screen and palm trees that had to be craned in to the garden. But police described him as a "Walter Mitty character", a "Del Boy" who had eye-watering debts when arrested – he owed £8,000 in electricity bills alone.

He first came to police attention when customs and excise were investigating him in 2002 and found child pornography images on his computer. He was given a caution and placed on the sex offenders' register but dropped off, as is routine, after five years in 2007. Blanchard was born in Liverpool. He has been married for 16 years. He made what money he really had selling computer parts in Manchester. He was known as a manipulative character, though police insisted he and the other two women were all equal partners in crime.

Angela Allen, 39, from Bulwell, Nottingham

An unemployed former bank worker, Allen used the alias Ang Bank for her online life. She lived in a pebble-dashed council house and was separated from her partner, a traffic warden. In her late teens or early 20s, she came to police attention for working as a prostitute. She also has an old conviction for dishonesty that scuppered her brief career working in a bank.

When police raided her house they found she was living in abject conditions - the place was dirty and there was little furniture or food in the house. She had hardly any money, but spent much of what she did have communicating with Blanchard and George and was the most graphic and explicit of the three in their online conversations.

She was described by police as living on the "fringe of society", and did not shed a tear on or after her arrest. She claimed she had met Blanchard on Facebook nine months before her arrest. Allen had made no attempt to get rid of incriminating evidence before police came for her despite having had a week to do so.